Hiring just the right housekeeper can be life-altering for the busy family. Now this may seem to be a little over-the-top, but I am serious. Think about your life-whether single, a couple or a family-you have no time. No time to keep your home as organized or clean as you would like. No time to do the smaller tidying jobs that would make a huge difference.

“I am still learning about my home. If you can’t do it yourself, find good service people and treat them well.” — Terry (mom to our Human Resources Coordinator, Louisa)

Raise your hand if you grew up with a mom (or another parental figure) constantly reminding you to clean your room. Often, our earliest memories of figuring out how to tidy up and take care of our homes are with our moms—they taught us how to do laundry, how to do the dishes, and how to make our beds. So it should come as no surprise that when we asked our moms for their best homekeeping advice, they came back with some great tips.

Most agreed on a few major themes: it’s important to make sure everything has a home, that you put things back when you take them out, and that your home is an inviting, relaxing place to come home to—and invite others to.

Do you ever casually go about your day, popping into the kitchen for a little peanut butter toast and then the next thing you know you’re turning over the toaster oven because it’s been so long and you just can’t take the crumbs anymore?

At the risk of sounding like a cloyingly optimistic Peppy Patty (which I can assure you, I am not), I never really understood all the pervasive hate for Mondays. I get that easing yourself from the freedom of the weekend into the structure of the workweek is a bit of a shock to the system…